China’s politicians and intellectuals are embracing the Greek and Roman classics just as the study of these subjects declines in the West.
Beijing sees the ancient civilizations as a parallel to what China hopes to achieve: “When China looks at the world, they want to be like Greece,” a Princeton Sinologist told The New Yorker.
Government support for the subject has bubbled up since 2021, when education officials from China and Greece began setting up research centers that separated the ancient West from the modern West. But that also brings tension: One young Chinese scholar who studied in the US said that some in China accused him of being “brainwashed” by American theorizing for his work that connected Roman history to Chinese sources.